Collections Unlinked with Catalog

[freemanjamese]

Lightroom Version

11.3.1

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

Please help! I am having serious problem with Lightroom Classic. I shot myself in my foot by changing my folder and file structure outside of Lightroom. I relocated my photos to their locations by syncing to the new locations. I can see and work on all photos at the new location. However, because the old location of another drive, Lightroom sees this old drive as not mounted and the photos on it as missing. My problem is that all photos in my Collections and my photos in Publish Services (SmugMug) are missing because they appear to be linked to the drive that is not mounted with i no longer have. If I try to link a photo in my collections it tells me that the photos “is associated with another photo in the catalog.”

All I would like is to have the photos in my collections linked up with the new folders.

I have extensive collections so this is a major problem. I am using Lightroom Classic, 11.3.1, and MacOs 12.3.1. See the screenshot below if this helps.

Many thanks.

 

[Jim Wilde]

I relocated my photos to their locations by syncing to the new locations.

Could you explain what you mean by this comment? Did you synchronise the "Pictures" folder in the new location, if so that means you have effectively re-imported all the images that already exist in the catalog, which is totally the wrong thing to do. The fact that the original "Pictures" folder is "missing" doesn't change the fact that all the images and all the data associated with those images is still in the catalog database, but still linked to the "missing" folders. You would now appear to have the same images duplicated in the catalog.

Is the "Pictures" folder in the new location a mirror image of the "Pictures" folder on the older drive? There are approximately an additional 4k images showing in "Pictures" in the new location, which I assume would either be some new imports or perhaps images that you had removed from Lightroom in the past, but which were not deleted from the disk, meaning the new synchronise action would have re-imported those as well.

If you let us know exactly what you did, fixing it may be a trivial task....but we first just need to be certain of the process that you followed.

 

[freemanjamese]

I know I did the wrong thing and also that I should have known better. I am sick about it. The Pictures folder in the new location is almost a mirror image. I believe you are correct that images I have removed in the past were probably re-imported. My problem is that the images in my Collections are viewed as missing because the old Pictures folder cannot be found. Also, I have discovered that all my "pick" flags are gone, but those with "star" and "color" ratings seem to be there. This is another major problem for my because I use the "pick" flags more than "star" ratings. Based on this experience if I had to do it all over again, I would only use star and color ratings.

I unable to move the images from the new folder to the new one because LR says the images are already there.

 

[freemanjamese]

I forgot to add one more comment. Even if I am able to get the images moved to the old location. Without the pick flags my Smart Collections will not work because all of them are based on smart flags.

 

[Jim Wilde]

I unable to move the images from the new folder to the new one because LR says the images are already there.

Stop trying to do anything along those lines. All your collections etc. should still be intact, the solution is to effectively tell Lightroom that all the images that it thinks are still on the old drive (but unavailable) are in fact now on a different drive, i.e. we just need to tell Lightroom to update its internal references to your images.....but all the existing metadata should still be retained (because that's contained in the catalog database, NOT in the images themselves), so your Smart Collections should still be OK.

The procedure is very simple:

1. Make a catalog backup of the current catalog (just as a restore point if needed).
2. Restart Lightroom, then in the Folders Panel you need to right-click on the "Pictures" folder on the new drive (i.e. the "Pictures" folder that is NOT "missing") and from the right-click menu click on the "Remove...." item. That will remove from the catalog all those 132k images that you re-imported (because you do not want all your images duplicated in the library). That might take a little while, but eventually all those sub-folders and images will be removed from the catalog, leaving only the "missing" 128k images shown on the old drive.
3. When 2 has completed, right-click on the "Pictures" folder that is shown as "missing" under the old drive. From the right-click menu, click on the "Find Missing Folder" item. That opens up a file-browser window, use that to navigate to the "Pictures" folder on the new drive (the one that you removed in step 2), then select that folder and Lightroom should then switch its internal references to the new drive and all folders, images, metadata, etc. should be restored.

And that should be it. Any images that you imported to the new drive after you made the change would have been removed by step 2, so would need to be re-imported.